Product Hub July 05, 2016
The Basketball Tournament Returns With Custom Apparel
If your bracket busted back in March, don’t worry. You have another chance to win money from a 64-team, college basketball-style tournament.
The Basketball Tournament returns for a third year starting July 9 with regionals emanating from Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia and Charlotte, North Carolina. Participants include anyone 18 years or older who doesn’t currently play in college or in the NBA. To be entered into the tourney, each team must recruit at least 200 votes through social media. One team per region will automatically qualify by raising the most money for Big Brothers Big Sisters of America.
In order to entice voters, the winning team of the entire single-elimination tournament receives $2 million—and 100 voters receive 10% of the pie.
Each team has merchandise available through The Basketball Tournament’s online store powered by Shopify, an e-commerce starter. T-shirts, jerseys and shorts, all plastered with each team’s logo, are available in multiple sizes. Each team’s logo is conceptualized and created by an in-house designer associated with The Basketball Tournament. The T-shirts, which are produced on demand, cost $25, while shorts cost $40 and jerseys cost $60. All orders will ship within 7 to 10 business days.
“Our event continues to grow in stature and awareness, and we’re again pleased to have ESPN along in an ever-expanding role to help us bring even more of our event to such a wide audience,” founder Jon Mugar said in a press release. “We’re experiencing exponential digital growth thus far in 2016 and anticipate a shockingly high level of play this summer. We strive to put on the highest stakes basketball product in the world, and I’d be surprised if our primetime championship game August 2 doesn’t get us all the way there.”
Popularized by sports and comedy blog Barstool Sports and the now-defunct sports website Grantland, The Basketball Tournament has grown to achieve a sponsorship from Jack Link’s Protein Snacks. ESPN will air all 15 of the Super 16 games, with 11 of those being televised on ESPN channels and the other four on ESPN3. The championship game will be played on August 2 at Fordham University in New York.
Previous winners include the Notre Dame Fighting Alumni and Overseas Elite, a team of veteran international professional players. Former NBA stars Mike Bibby, Josh Howard and Larry Sanders have all announced they’ll play in this year’s tournament.
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